


Dancers

by ivyness



Series: AU Yeah August 2018 [31]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: All sorts of dance, Alternate Universe - Dance, Ballroom dance, M/M, au yeah august, dealer's choice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 08:59:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyness/pseuds/ivyness
Summary: No one likes John. Everyone loves Bane.





	Dancers

No one likes John.

Well, no. That’s not true. John is brilliant, kind, and vibrant and when he smiles grandmas swoon. Everyone loves John.

Except for ballroom dancers. They hate John.

*****

Everyone loves Bane.

But that’s also not true. Bane is aggressively big, his personality loomes like a sledgehammer, and he enjoys making men faint in fear. Everyone is scared of Bane.

Except for dancers. More specifically, ballroom dancers. They love Bane.

*****

John never imagined he would end up in ballroom dance. 

When he was a kid, some wealthy donor had paid for ballet classes for everyone in the orphanage, for whatever good that did. They opened up a whole new world to John, showed him a world of dazzling beauty and grace and once the funding dried up they slammed the doors closed in his face.

Classes were simply too expensive and no one wanted a dirty, half-starved, orphaned runt crawling in among the white tights and tiaras.

But he kept dancing. 

Once he started looking for them he found dancers everywhere. On street corners, parks, and rooftops. He found people dancing under the railway tracks and in empty warehouses. Everywhere he looked there were people dancing, vibrant and bright and filled with laughter. 

He learned sean-nós from a dour, old Irish dame who would whack him with her glove when she saw he wasn’t listening to the music. 

Listen! She would say. Or the music will try to trip you up; people will push you down. But when you fall, stand with grace and they will not know how they got to you. 

She always gave him extra cookies to bring back to the other kids. 

He learned Jarabe Tapatío from a couple of Mexican grandmas who didn’t speak a word of English and lived in a co-op two blocks from the orphanage. 

They laughed and pinched his cheeks at his attempts at suave, sexy, stamping and instead taught him how to flick his skirts, twist his wrists and tilt his neck. 

For his birthday they gave him a brightly colored skirt they had sewn together from their own older dresses and a large, handsome sombrero. Wearing them, dancing in them, he had never felt more beautiful, never felt more seen.

After the fifth time John had come back from school with a black eye and a vicious scowl, Father Reilly had taken him by the shoulder and marched him out the door and down the street for a long walk. 

He brought John to an empty corner lot, the debris from the demolished building had been piled up and pushed to the sides. Father Reilly sat in silence while John wandered, kicking at the ground in nervous agitation.

Slowly, people started to trickle in, laughing and greeting each other with smiles. A few people glanced at John but left him alone with his scowl.

Cheers arose from the crowd when an older Brazilian man arrived, trailed by a few men and women carrying the black wrapped bags and cases of musical instruments. People crowded around them, talking and mingling while they set up, pulling out what looked like a set of congas, tambourines and three fishing rod-like poles with gourds attached to the ends.

The crowd cleared a space in the middle of their tight circle, clapping and nodding along as the musicians started a thumping, heartbeat rhythm. 

John glanced at Father Reilly in confusion, who just nodded towards the circle and John hesitantly made his way over, people parting to let him see.

Two people had stepped forward into the center of the ring of bodies. They were clapping and stomping, their whole bodies weaving up and down to the music, circling one another, warily. One of them called out, a shout that echoed against the neighboring buildings and an orchestra of voices rose from the circle in a powerful call and response.

Riding the waves of shouts and song, the two in the center tangled, legs kicking high, arms and elbows swinging in powerful arches; a beautiful fight, dance, game, a story of triumph and freedom.

John went back every week. The tension that he had been carrying between his shoulder blades slowly dissipating as he learned capoeira; the fight and the dance.

In that circle of shouting, swinging limbs, John danced with a partner for the very first time. There, John first met Bane.

*****

Bane had been going through partners as quick as he went through painkillers ever since Talia left him.

No one seemed able to connect with him like she had. They had all been brilliant dancers but there was something missing, he felt sloppy and uncoordinated, unworthy of their favor. He’d still dance with them if they asked but they were professionals and they could feel something missing from his lead. 

Bane hadn’t meant to wander the streets of Gotham so late the night before a competition. But there was something compelling about Gotham. A dark thrumming quality to its streets, decay and corruption, and yet the people walked with quick, confident strides.

He saw himself in the city. Walking around, living his life, pretending he wasn’t already dead, as if he hadn’t died the moment Talia left him. He followed the thumping pulse of the city into its dirty, grimy parts, until he found of huddle of dancers moving to the same heartbeat rhythm.

In the murky darkness, a ring of bodies twisting, shouts ringing out in the night, Bane found his follow and gave John his lead.

The ballroom world wouldn’t know what hit them.

*****

John never imagined he would end up in ballroom dance. Never imagined he would see the world outside of Gotham’s shadow. Never imagined that he would dance upon beautiful wooden floors with spotlights shining down on him, that he would have a partner, that he would be happy.

This was Bane’s world. He’d lived and breathed and would certainly die here, and the other ballroom dancers adored him for it. Brave and strong, a performer at heart, he tore through John’s world and took him onto the floor.

And Bane would’ve stayed. Like he stayed for Talia, Bane would’ve stayed for John. He would’ve stayed where he was lonely and idolized, a haunted shadow of himself, and John refused to do that to his partner. So John stole him away and the ballroom world will never forgive him. 

But Bane is still dancing. Dancing by John’s side on street corners, parks, and rooftops, with grandmas, kids, and strangers, finding that bit of joy in the darkest of places, and John can’t bring himself to feel sorry he did it.


End file.
